Russia cleans up after meteor explosion

AS RUSSIAN authorities search for remnants of the space object that startled residents of the Chelyabinsk region, scientists said its shockwave was a loud warning they hoped would inspire action to prevent potential catastrophes.

''When a small piece of rock would fall on the Earth 100 years ago, it could have caused minimal damage and would have stayed largely undetected, but Friday's accident fully demonstrated how vulnerable the technological civilisation of today has become,'' said Vladimir Lipunov, head of the Space Monitoring Laboratory with Moscow State University.

''It is high time Russia should start investing heavily in building an advanced space danger monitoring and warning system and a system capable of destroying such super bombs falling on us,'' he said.

The hole in the ice believed to have been made by part of the meteor. Photo: AFP

His remarks echoed concern among government officials. ''Today neither Russia nor the United States is capable of shooting down objects from outer space,'' tweeted Dmitry Rogozin, Vice-Premier in charge of the nation's defence industry.

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In the US, NASA scientists estimated that the amount of energy released in the atmosphere by the 10-tonne meteor was about 30 times greater than the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

Regional governor Mikhail Yurevich said damage exceeded $US33 million but that 30 per cent of the windows broken by the shock wave had already been replaced. About 20,000 municipal employees, emergency workers and volunteers worked round the clock to fix the windows in a region where the overnight temperature fell to minus 20 degrees.

Divers finished their initial inspection of Chebarkul Lake, about 65 kilometres west of Chelyabinsk, but found no traces of the object, a big chunk of which was believed to have fallen into the lake.

The Chelyabinsk region has long been one of the most important military-industrial regions of Russia, where ''you can't drive a mile without passing a defence or a nuclear industry installation'', Professor Lipunov said.

''We should be thankful to fate that this meteor, in fact, was a blessing in disguise, and instead of destroying a significant part of Russia with quite dire consequences to the rest of the world, it sent us a clear warning signal by simply blowing up a bunch of windows and lightly injuring more than 1000 people,'' he said.

Mr Rogozin said he would provide Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev with ''proposals on possibilities to register the danger of the Earth's coming close to 'aliens' '' and to prevent such events in the future.

Many Russian experts say government funding for a monitoring system should be reinstated and that it should be equipped with 59-inch (150-centimetre) telescopes like those in the US.

''As these people were united in their horror and their panic on Friday in the Chelyabinsk region,'' Professor Lipunov said, ''so the governments of the most developed countries should unite in creating a system of warning and global protection from surprise attack from space.''